MPBN is partnering with the Telling Room in Portland in August to highlight the work of young writers. Here's "Edelweiss" by LizzyLemieux.
He takes me on his knee, the one that’s meat and not wood,
Clenching a bone-dry cigar between bony teeth.
All of him needs watering, folded skin like paper cranes,
But he only drinks stronger stuff. And,
He is scared of swimming things, I think.
I look up, head tilted like I’m drinking from his glass,
finding black spaces in his teeth as sharps on a piano,
and every time his lips part to say my nickname, “Edelweiss,”
I try to plunk out melodies I learned this week
in kindergarten. We sink toy boats in the sandbox there,
But the teacher makes them resurface after break.
Maybe she was the one who made him resurface too.
I’m only on the “C” in London Bridge when he laughs at me.
“Are my teeth too yellow for you, Edelweiss?”
His voice is loud. Small men talk big. He says that.
I shrug, continue banging out the piece,
B, C, D… Which is the part that goes “falling down”
and all I can think of is him falling down,
on the crest of the alps, watering Edelweiss,
which he has such a fondness for,
with his wounds.
Lizzy Lemieux is a 16-year-old student from Gorham, Maine. She wrote this poem as part of her forthcoming collection of poetry, which will be published as part of the Telling Room’s Young Emerging Authors Fellowship and is focused on themes of identity and familial history. Next year she will attend Interlochen Arts Academy as the winner of the Virginia B. Ball Creative Writing Scholarship Contest. Please join Lizzy and the other three Telling Room Young Emerging Authors at their official book launch on August 21, from 4:30-5:30 p.m. at SPACE Gallery in Portland. The young authors will be on hand to read from their work, take part in a Q&A, and sign books available for purchase on site.